Tag Archives: ANSI art

Today we’ll look at some of the classic games that were based on Rogue and have since developed into decade-spanning addictions for RPG lovers. Since there are over three decades of roguelikes, you are only seeing my personal recommendations of a massive world of games. There are plenty more you if you dig a little. As you can see some of these have even been ported to iOs and Android. Most of the games are so simple that you can install the entire thing on a USB jump drive, pop it into any random computer you encounter and pick up where you left off.

Imagine if every time you played Legend of Zelda, the dungeons were in different places, the mini-quests changed and even new monsters and weapons appeared. You’d probably be much more apt to replay the game for more than just nostalgic reasons. Personally, I only replay games when so much time has passed that I no longer remember the details.

Looking out over a water-filed cave with shrubberies on the far shore in Brogue…

This is the promise of Roguelikes – a genre of turn-based games that have a lot in common with RPGs. Although they eschew the heavy story elements and everything but the most basic graphics, what they offer in depth of play more than makes up for it. Roguelikes offer infinite replay value can usually be played on almost any machine that can run a terminal and can be very addicting.

Sometimes I miss the days of low quality graphics like SNES’s Mode 7 graphics and ANSI art. There was something great about seeing an image not quite resolve properly and get all pixelated. It was so cutting edge to see Bowser fly out from the background, even if he looked like a bunch of blocks when he got to the front of the screen. I loved it then and I love it now.